Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Thuri Calafia, author of Dedicant and the new Initiate. I remember the first time I tried Sacred Dreaming. I had just finished Scott Cunningham’s wonderful Dreaming the Divine, and I found it both sad and intriguing that nearly every world culture once had, at some point in time, dream temples that were fully staffed with skilled interpreters to guide and advise the dreamers who visited there, but that the only culture in the world that still had such temples was/is Japan. Being solitary and not Japanese, I set about following his sage advice regarding Sacred Dreaming in my own bedroom; I set up my dream altar and asked a beloved deity for

Tarot of the Hidden Realm is an exciting deck by artist Julia Jeffrey and is scheduled to be released next fall. The images are so lovely, I cannot resist sharing them. I am finding them so inspiring, as I write the companion book. 4 of Swords Thoughts tangled in her mind binding her in confusion and distress. Her muscles tighten. Then, she slowly exhales a prayer. In a moment, she looks up, sensing an answer. The veil of trouble echoes in her eyes, but with each flutter of ethereal wing it grows lighter. Soon it will pass away and she will see more clearly. Like gifts from the heavens, the light blue wings bring peace. The almost imperceptible whispers of air kiss her skin

There is no Kabalah Or more accurately, there is no single thing, belief, or system, no single book, technique, philosophy or theology, that is the extent of the Kabalah. Whenever someone says, "according to the Kabalah…" or "the Kabalah says…" they are at best being incomplete and at worst showing their lack of knowledge about the subject. In fact, there are many Kabalistic traditions. Although they rarely outright disagree with each other, they often focus on completely different things. One of these schools is based on the teachings of the sixteenth-century Kabalist, Isaac Luria. Lurianic Kabalah focuses on the way God created the universe and then on purifying or "fixing" the

Some time ago, a friend of mine, Dr. Matthew James, president of Kona University, told a story about his experience while studying for his PhD. In one class, a student has submitted a paper that included references from Wikipedia. The professor denounced Wikipedia and anyone who used it for a reference, returning the paper to the student. Is that fair? Should Wikipedia be denounced, or at least not trusted? Well, I think we should look at what Wikipedia has to say about their own reliability: Here is part of their General Disclaimer: WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY Wikipedia is an online open-content collaborative encyclopedia; that is, a voluntary association of